"We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it" Tennessee Williams American playwright. 1911-1983 ( and my Grandma Axie Fender McIntosh's 2nd cousin)
I've lost the reason why summer school is a good idea.
They say it's an "intervention strategy.'
I thought of it all my life as a punishment, or perhaps, a way to say...shape up.
And then my view teaching 23 years-summer camp for kids too poor to go to one....or like here in my area of CA where rec centers and park programs don't exist...in my hood.
And it's lost as a good idea partially because the paperbag starfish today looked so really awful.
Yeah, looked bad and "said" nothing that looked like science, starfish or art.
Except "I no sea star am."
Kind of cute here in my pictures though.....
I'm not sure you should even make paperbag starfish when it's easily over 105 in your classroom, and you keep seeing double ( a little issue of mine this summer). And spent at least $500 out of an empty pocket for treats, supplies and materials to do the program "to your level."
Oh plus buying the thermometer to see how hot these rooms really get.
The good news is it isn't all menopause.
I call the Starfish below with the black legs "Old Dan Tucker" altho Deputy Starfish also is good......, you can see my kelp forest below too hanging down over tables, with fish embedded. Altho Heidi my partner teacher called it. "What a mess", that kelp garden was a genius stroke.
I'm not sure about paperbag starfish at 72 degrees on the Riviera either.
Pretty much they seem very typical of an idea of mine gone way south.
But the paper bag pink octopuses are actually cool.
Looks like a set of dancing legs in the Follies.
I can't explain that other than saying certain forms lend themselves to this kind of paper bag expression.
Others don't. Teaching is like this. Create meaning, take chances, fail, return try again.
Or it used it be.
I read yesterday some new piece of NCLB driven "data" that suggests being out of school for a summer, say in your own world, or in your own family world , is ruining educational "gains."
"Tests show"......I wonder if we saw an upsurge in mental health issues or stress related issues from staying at home too or were those increases seen for being in a test factory called school..... test practices aren't looking too conducive to happiness and education constructs are behavioral rigidity in my hood......we might also logically conclude these school seated pressures take another kind of toll. Ah well..... are we allowed to suggest that? Draw that conclusion?
Finland has 100% literacy, vacations all over the place, no formal reading instruction until 7 or 8, free access to colleges and terrific training for professions outside of college, but comparatives like that only cloud some point Spellings wants to make about how great her
NCLB test assessment idea was. Kept her from pursuing that Master's degree or higher education it was so damn compelling.
It would seem most people want only to imply that school will "handle" children's needs in a superior fashion. More of it must be better.
It's all in what you look for I suppose.
I worked to run a good summer school, freed as much as I could from test practice rigidity which failed the group I got...frankly. And I wondered every minute of it. Was it preferable to being in family lives in summer? And did we manage to make a place of warmth? And fun? And learning?
I tried.
In pseudo science it's all about the spin cycle, but isn't that kind of anxiety based issue for our children in school about over fixation on test prepping also rising emotional issues related to school? It certainly plagued my own family's children this year in the form of insomnia, anxiety and serious stress with children doing nothing but homework dropping dance, art, guitar and other time spent painting and making to cram for endless test prep. I guess it "pays" off, if losing the pleasures of childhood is a payoff.
Summer was always a pleasure for me young even if I did go sit in a field, look at violets, tiger lilies, wild roses, orioles and walking sticks and do "nothing." Made a lot of art, played a lot of music. Read a whole lot. Discovered a neighbor, learn to run a sewing machine, went to the Parks and Rec classes, swam.
Play served a purpose.
I was a "me".
Driving back from a teacher meeting in Santa Barbara (thinking it is one snooty place for reasons to come forward on another day) today I thought seriously about starfish paperbag puppets as my personal aesthetic failure, thought about "the meek" and if this is their inheritance of the earth then who or what has died (and God kind of comes springing to mind), thought about who in my room did a lousy job in their daily writing practice mandated journals this summer school and why they were so boring and disliked (mandated in form) a killer of writing, the way of summer school academic efforts(try and find it consistently), considered all this as the mountains and ocean passed by my eyes.
The drive from Ventura to Santa Barbara is unique, beautiful. Not as majestic as some of the coastal drive up north on Highway 1, in the state but pretty wonderful. Many people find it familiar probably due to the film industry. On the way you pass La Conchita where a mountain fell twice on a small beachy home development stuck at the base of the mountain. In the second fall killing a family of girls, you look in disbelief on a mountain sitting on these houses. I usually stare at that and think about how impossible it is to hold back a mountain that's wet here. And how it's best to live now and do what you love now. in education. The time is NOW.
California land of ....... floods, fires, earthquakes, mudslides, riots, gangs, movies, business and immigrants. And enlightenment.
I've seen these things very close up. My home once 20 miles from the epicenter of Loma Prieta. I've seen fires from a distance of half a mile, evacuated my home, been evacuated from a place I stayed in, seen fires that the rest of the country watched on CNN burning toward San Diego and toward my home and school.
And in education, in my room, baby, it sits squarely in the Ring of Fire.
At least educationally. My love of children and public education is ablaze.
Look. I'm here on fire. The time is NOW.
With poverty, immigration, 2nd language, Under performance, race issues, public education issues, NCLB bringing back consultant sold behaviorism program solutions for kids that live in less economic resources, and all day test practice, issues in equity, children and health coverage....yeah...gangs too......child abuse, teachers and schools as scapegoats, the privatization of American schools, all the stuff that burns us all, here it sits, yes with NCLB changes, the fire went wild. Out in my Wild West school classroom. In America's bonfire.
As I drove home from Santa Barbara I contemplated images I saw in France done by Marc Chagall that were full of the 'unique feel' of his rich color, his symbolism -oh there's culture one can idealize, his capacity to capture his childhood......what a painter.......my life could go to looking at those images so rich in valuation for the culture of his life...and my life is going honoring the notion my children have the right to view themselves through these lenses....who I am matters, my right to play, to discover matters, my right to the arts, to pieces of my cultural traditions matter, my language developing in context and in meaningful work matters, math and science tied to nature, to living matters.....I am not embarrassed to be me by where i came from. Matters. Chagall taught that. Just look and understand.
Driving along that CA coast I also thought long and hard about losing the ego-specifically my ego- what would that be like and how this might assist me in teaching, blinking at passing summers of teaching in my life appearing as memory snippets, in and out neither good nor bad, and considered deeply if gluing on those sequins shouldn't have yielded better looking bling-o covered starfish.
Paperbag starfish can really bring you down.
A drive down the coast processing many different realities. And the fires that are necessary to turn some of my lame brain ideas into actual learning for my children, the skill sets I need. The capacities to connect and make true understanding. The force of will required now of a teacher. Insights. The personal connection as well as the spark.
Well.... on the Starfish puppets, my intention was we'd put on a 'play' our last week of summer school(this week)where all the creatures of the coral reef told in a cute way about their niche. I've read and they've written about ocean environments for 4 weeks. The program FOREBAD me from actually taking them to the ocean or the library around the block, even if I was willing to pay the 300 for a bought bus. Which I had to then cancel and forfeit $75. That's usually how I fund fieldtrips, I pay and charter a bus. The Pumkin farm, for instance, it's worth it. My kids learn in places in the real world, places they do not get to see necessarily.
I had more books on the coral reef than on other parts of the ocean so we went the way of find out a bit more on reefs using Reading Rainbow and The Magic School Bus and a variety of films and projects, collections of shells, coral, sharks jaws and things collected to use teaching. But I also took a long look at our waters here around the Channel Islands. I've been several visits to Anacapa, and learned a little. This is where Island of the Blue Dolphins was inspired. This is the place of Chumash and these are the islands that dramatically affect our climate. Quite a fascinating venture that is. Lots to investigate. They think pygmy mastodons were on these islands. Pygmy foxes are studied there now. Islands do unique things to animals, and how wildlife gets to them also teaches us much about biology. I personally love biology.
So I thought we'd act out a play to practice our oral English. And thus 'eco knowledge is born'. And I may try it yet even with the sorry starfish. And two days to go. Plus planning a nice food chain reenactment, mostly for the boys. Sharks you know. No one but Axel volunteered to play the diatoms. My daughter Sylvia is coming back in despite feeling vewry ill, to manage some work on the food web.
But when no one can read the text, converse and when even saying the idea of the drama to them conceptually is confounded and basically too confusing due to the 2nd language levels, and no one is playing enough freely (not allowed) to generate dialog even when you let them "play"(illegally)....the idea sort of transforms into make the puppet and staple it up over here. Or watch a few beat each other with them. Introduce the shark puppet without good context and it gets ripped apart in about 7 minutes. This I know.
Play at 6 and 7 and freedom within play is immensely valuable.
DOA. Poor lesson my starfish I think. I so hate that.
A little bit like my aquarium death watch actually. I started an aquarium this summer, if you do not read here this is the big news you missed, and it is starting to "stabilize." That's a very positive feeling. I say this as the water is clear finally and nothing died today.
It was supposed to go to school but I tried it at home and you won't believe how heavy water is to move. I just added two albino catfish (they are too flighty, the other fish hate them) and two white fish called "Molly's". So I have 4 guppies, two gold things I forget their name, five of these things I call silver dollar wafers, three frogs. It's been a very interesting experience trying to keep them all alive and figure out what's going on. Guess what? The nitrogen cycle is VERY interesting.So are test strips. Lots died in a month (5 guppies, 1 frog, 1 sucker fish). And I gained the understanding in nature things do die, in aquarium captivity we theoretically prolong the inevitable. Man's inhumanity to man transformed into mans's humanity in action.
In theory I kill them with kindness, as overfeeding is the biggest mistake sited and my issue.
But I worry nothing gets down to the frogs at the bottom. I worry over the frogs.
So we have our funerals for the fallen fish and generally look at the tank on first sight in the morning with trepidation. I can't say enough about water changes.
I'm starting in the fall an aquarium in the room and I think getting two parakeets, a green one to be named Kiwi and maybe a blue named Skye. No one in my house so far supports this idea. You think I'd decided to bring in an emu. Well, not yet. It's my intention to keep journals on these pet projects everyday, well pretty often, on-line with kids assigned as daily writers rotating and using the digital camera to photo and tell "what's up". It is true my families have pets, but raising fighting roosters and dogs that fight seem to be as common as the parrots and Pomeranians. But most of my students in apartments or with many in a home they aren't really able to have pets. And I cannot tell you how it mystifies me even after 20 years when I ask the name of the dog they want to tell me about and they look at me with a blank stare. There is something different here, something that should be understood. But I'm not sure.....it's just a difference that I note.
If the computers remain broken in my classroom and so old I can haul to Antiques Roadshow, and they stay off line on a system pretty well blocked and shut down anyway, they'll be using the "teacher station" for these tasks to disk, or I'll haul over my Mac and download at home. Plus our "wiring" can't support even every teacher on-line. Summer was supposed to solve this with "copper" according to a person who really won't SOLVE anything and is in a position through NO DEMONSTRATED COMPETENCE to stall off ever getting anything managed. THe people left the district that long ago envisioned technolgy and the cutting edge as a WAY to assist kids in poverty to some kind of equity. That the reason I decided to come work, only to discover it was layered underneth fiefdoms. And so nothing will be wired or considered and even with money nothing will be required. Nothing but stalling and lunking in the head metaphorically any teacher asking the wrong questions-like why aren't we involved in teaching 2.0 to kids?
We now have a tech grant for low functioning schools ( lots of money actually) that mostly seems to pay the salary of a teacher who now takes a year leave, and is the person they wink /nod plan to hand the tech job to who has no technology vision and this particular site person is planning to "run it" so that it will stay at the dysfunctional level he has assisted it too for 15 years, excepting in his room. And that's a laugh too.
Money for nothing-kicks for free. Our motto in technology. This is what 800 kids per year in dire poverty with about 15% having access to technology at home get.
Absolutely nothing but a canned workbook program called SuccessMaker. And AR. It's "mandated." Another fire burning. Inefficiency and lack of skill sets.
I just have no apologies for sharp speaking.
What I've seen has been disgraceful. Hording and poverty can do this if one choses to react in a way to manage resources poorly (to yourself first of course). (Read Colin Turnbull on the Ik regarding this please, it's a story that stays with me fully about just what happens in famine-should be mandatory reading for teachers). People are capable of great madness in poverty situations or under the threat of loss of resources. Also capable of greatness. Choices. I know this too, it's one of the most destabilizing forces in education/hording and self involvement around resource allocation. You know the sad part, it feels so "normal" and gets all balled up in who is "in" and who isn't, in politics and in the so called "culture" of expectations and practices at a school site. Try and question if Mr. X really deserves that tech job, in two seconds what is heard is an attack on his sweetness or how he is a lovely guy to hang with. Sure.
A stranger comes in, in about 5 minutes they say....wait a second.
When I went to Hathaway I had not a single book the year I taught 6th. I was told to "get" what I needed from the long term teacher who was in 6th. Her answer, "I bought all of mine". Which turned out to be nothing but a fabrication. Lots of texts. But her fear of loss outweighed her good Christian constructs, something she did point out to me, her faith. I was new.
I saw it then for what it was and 15 years later still is. Hording.
Poor leadership, poor resource allocation. Issues in need and want.
One set of kids having a different relationship then to the resources.
Even within the school, which is a microcosm of the county and the divides in national education.
In California the Williams Lawsuit kind of changed things a little around access to text books at least.. Twenty five years ago when I was in LA teaching in South Central, a person attempted to bring a class action suit against LA Unified regarding the different experience a child in Watts and a child in the "Valley" had within "public education". It was a stark truth. Absolutely. Probably still is.
I can't speak to the Valley but in 93rd Street School I had nothing but some white binder paper. Zero. And there were teachers with phenomenal things yhere true, but overall most had next to nothing. It was just not there. That long ago suit a judge canned. It did not get into the courts.
I could not believe it.
In the then respectable LA Times they really covered that story over the months.
When the suit was dismissed my jaw fell on the floor. I saw the kids had nothing. It was completely appropriate to go to the courts. Where else could you go?
Class actions were hard to get off the ground but the ACLU did carry it out later. And so now....we are inspected to be sure we have texts in every room in every subject for every child (in every single room) so lying and faking doesn't happen unless your county office of Ed. is in collusion as it falls to them to oversee/inspect this.
I'm not much for texts. In fact I think they are mostly pretty lame, but I do take immense satisfaction in knowing that my kids have them. And the suit addressed bathrooms per child, buildings, safety..........I'm actually very pleased about that too. I hope working quality computers and laptops comes up under the grant specs or the lawsuit somehow. Otherwise I've lost hope..... It should be mandatory every child has one. A laptop. And the school needs at the least to be a wireless network. And at the least teachers need the same. I need to have this to learn how to teach it. This piece isn't just about lessons of mine that go south, it's also about WHY they go south. One reason is I need to be near the state of art teaching today. Not lunking around with a paperbag puppet.
'
...Plus (going back to my plans for fall in my "watch our pets " as project ) I'm thinking of assigning children who will be blogging , one way or the other, perhaps something specific to "watch for" with their classrom animals.
A kind of journal of a class observing and talking about their pets.
Not earth shattering thinking. I've been involved a few years in a migration project where we watch for 1st signs of whales, monarch and song birds as well as frogs. But this year I'm going to send out a "team" everyday to observe an area of the "yard" and note what is going on in terms of "life there". It may completely be boring but a small space of ground is getting journaled. Then we will walk once a week to the Bubbling Springs Park which is a bit of a hike, about three miles total, and feed ducks, look for crawdads and do something. I'm not sure what but I think something about frogs. I'm working on this.
Just what we see if we get calm and look closely. That's kind of my focus.
I spent a lot of my childhood in silence in the woods. I know it has value.
I watch the fish in my aquarium, and now they know me. If I approach the tank they greet me, not so for other family members, except Luca. So........that's note worthy. The way they relate around feeding is also interesting. Think, it's mine. Very hard to watch, they always seem desperate. No altruism in this tank.
Journaling with children should be to purposes so I'm growing some orchids to discuss, study, tend, watch and quite possibly getting them a turtle. Maybe . Science is sadly lacking in my UnderPerforming school in the hood, displaced by mindless test prep and mandated workbook in a can and the worst ELD proram i ever saw.....short of doing nothing. The 1st grade "Standards" seems to dictate losing one's mind in instructional leadership and awareness of the value of things like the arts and actual "hand on" in science and math to build the connections and bases upon which learning is based. Experiences left town along with the hope of health care for all children. Oh no, we wouldn't want to consider something like THAT.
Both my teaching practice and intuition, is sensing that if we engage with these animals, which incidentally IS The STANDARDS for this age, watch them, record what we see, if we are involved, it might be a way to teach, if only to teach writing embedded in a reason to do it. I call this a thematic or meaning centered way. It might be called "doing her own thing." Maybe.
So it is. And this is part of what this summer reinforces for me. i'm watching children coming into a new culture, new language, dealing from a position in poverty, in issues unresolved in our country and you see the value of putting the child into meaningful contexts. as family, home, animals get batted around in the basals and workbooks I'm trying to build with my skills songs, signing, animal projects and projects from he little tech i have to support success.
I can honestly say I've learned from my aquarium.
Which is a kind way of saying I don't know what I'm doing all the time, or even much of the time, but in the classroom a 25 gallon tank would be better. More fish. More space. Easier to see, more frogs. a place to learn, watch, think about, problem solve. Consider.
The irony is I've fallen in love with the frogs.You need t watch that. One died as his tiny foot got caught in a plastic plant one night. It was like this the next morning. Plastic plants are gone. Plastic plants killed my beautiful frog. Did you know that sea turtles eat jellyfish but plastic bags ad trash float and resemble them so they eat that and choke to death? Well now you do. I'm getting a tiny clear shrimp for my tank.
Maybe it's time to just say the teaching job got a lot harder, messier, ethically sticky and this summer lights the fire. Damn it.
Let's talk about the "theory" of putting together children this summer who are not producing English after 2 years of a program that "says" they will be at a language level of 2 or wayyyy better. At-risk "intervention". So my group are the kids that didn't achieve anything like the "model'. Think 5 levels to speaking and working in English very well and zero is staring at you and saying "I water teacher". If that.
So my job this summer is pretty much watching the genius of forgetting the value of language "models" and different language and ability levels in rooms and grouping together kids that are struggling. Oh and grouping by some other things too. Things that might be worth considering with some deeper minds than mine.
I have 20 children from 5 schools that are going to go to 2nd grade and fail the "standards" because they have yet to get the 1st grade "standards" and can't speak English except to the most limited way. And yet, in 2nd they will be expected to "perform" just like all their peers nationwide. It's the high expectation. Anything less and I was lying down on the job. And so it goes.
For a minute today I put out all their stories and took a look at them. Artifacts. Mostly these were Language Experience pieces. They would read a short book. We would "talk" with me about the content, vocabulary. lots of explaining, simplifying. Then they would generate a short sentence we would write together with me assisting the separation of sounds, the more impossible text and then illustrate it. The work looks pretty lame. Overall. Like the second month of 1st grade.
In fact it looks like my 19th nervous breakdown. Mediocrity would be a mountain compared to this work.
I'm thinking about this. I went in this summer with a notion of a theme (ocean, "saving the...") but it was quickly turned into a noun party because the children could not grasp most of what I said and I'd planned over their levels. My class last year looking better and better....so I had to really look at who I had realistically after a few days and sing more songs, move more, sometimes make more art, generally involve more tactile connections to concrete experiences.Then connected to oral language development. most of the program has been oral. That might be why the written stories kind of look lousy and I'm so tired. It's what is required because these children for the most part have not engaged English in this way before. They got tired. I got tired. They appeared to be unmotivated too often. I got frustrated with "effort" too often. I taught a lot of sign language which does tremendously help children in this setting.
That's because.......................what i'm capable of doing and asked to do and did instructionally combined with their unique features is a bit like a story that I want to relate. It's burning out of controll for many reasons.
The story is actually two but one sets up the other , it's a tale of fire, one that burns me and burns my kids. Something that seems out of control. One that was accelerated in the last few years.....and it's interesting that I do have some experiences now with fires to relate. And this will, eventually wind back to my room, the heat and sweat of my recent days and a burning in my being.
A few years ago I went to work at a little school in Warner Springs, CA. In fact I' writing a book about that year. It was a unique career oportunity to enter into a very small, rural, Native American largely school that was carrying years of bitterness and injury from how students weretaken from the reservation and schooled combined with many features of hard lives on this reservation. My husband took the job as I recovered from a hysterectomy gone wrong, followed by infection, peritonitis, a hospital giving so much Demerol over a month I had withdrawal and hidden cancer curling around my main artery in my intestine. So I went to teach for him "filling in' as there was an opening in a 3, 4, 5, 6 combination class. It was to be one of the most challenging and abusive experiences, yet wild and rather like the wildness of nature. But it began and was birthed in fire. This is how I learned about fires.
We arrived at his "job' a couple weeks early. Before a house was "ready" so we stayed up on the mountain. Kind of real hell as the kids school in Temecula started two weeks earlier than Jack'sso i had to drive them down either wait all day or drive the 60 miles winding back. Mostly the kids and i threw up every time we drove it. Poor Luca and Sophia were green. And all the miles plus moving the 125 degree heat and tension of this was wearing for them. There weren't exactly lots of places there to stay, ranches and different kids of "places" so on a winding road through the rockiest mountains I ever saw we wound a drive it took me 6 months not to throw up driving 60 miles down to Temecula to live. But for the first weeks we stayed at the "Resort" of Warner Springs in a cabin. This was a place that Teddy Roosevelt liked to visit. It hasn't changed. Hot Springs...sulphur. Very rough to me. Good food in the "Lodge". Kind of an outdoors place. Big fireplaces. I liked that. But I was very sick and nothing was fine. We arrived as fires raced up through the San Diego mountains through the.
writing up lesson plans to get paid...this will need towait till late or tomorrow.
I seriously did nothing on the books.
no a red onion is beautiful, apurple onion is often like wax...you know that
and I'm thinking this red onion has to get this written
Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your hearth or burn down your house, you can never tell. Joan Crawford
No comments:
Post a Comment
I am now moderating comments.